


Root Healing Magic for the Solo Practitioner  🧵

by wellthen



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Abuse, Abusive Relationships, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Betrayal, Childhood Memories, Childhood Trauma, College, Cross-Generational Friendship, Dysfunctional Family, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Eventual Romance, F/F, Family, Family Issues, Fun, Grief/Mourning, Healing, Implied/Referenced Mind Control, Internet, Loneliness, Love, Magic, Mental Coercion, Mental Health Issues, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Past Abuse, Power Dynamics, Recovery, Rituals, Self-Discovery, Self-Esteem Issues, Shame, Tags Are Hard, Witchcraft, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-16
Updated: 2020-06-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:27:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24748333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wellthen/pseuds/wellthen
Summary: After she leaves Willow, the biggest barrier to Tara’s magical practice is her lack of a reasonable bathtub.
Relationships: Faith Lehane/Buffy Summers, Faith Lehane/Tara Maclay, Tara Maclay/Willow Rosenberg
Comments: 11
Kudos: 68





	1. Preparation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tara writes about her bathtub dilemma on the magical message board where she used to post, before she met Willow. This is what she had before Willow: her mother’s 3 ring binder book of spells and the internet.

After she leaves Willow, the biggest barrier to Tara’s magical practice is her lack of a reasonable bathtub. 

At first, she’s not interested in magic at all, just like she’s not interested in returning Dawn or Xander’s calls. She throws herself into her most material classes, studying acid rain, neurological disorders, the hole in the ozone.

But then one day in her Current Affairs class, the professor pulls up a news headline. “Gangs on PCP Strike Again,” it says.

“Tara, what’s your take on this as it relates to our justice system? Is it too carceral or not carceral enough?”

The snakes are back. Her professor’s face belongs to Glory. She can’t move, she never left hell and she never will. 

When she accidentally hits her hand against the desk, realizing she’s not frozen after all, she leaves class without picking up her notebook.  
Tara needs a bathtub so she can do ritual cleansing. She needs to do ritual cleansing so she can cast the types of spells she is most interested in casting: a type of healing magic called a root cycle. 

Root cycles, comprised of basic healing spells connected by ritual, are performed to create exponential healing. 

By healing the arm, you can heal the body. 

By healing the branch, you heal the tree. 

Tara writes about her bathtub dilemma on the magical message board where she used to post, before she met Willow. This is what she had before Willow: her mother’s 3 ring binder book of spells and the internet.


	2. Lineage Healing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The imperative of healing your full family lineage, says HedgeWitchOR, is that you can stop the pain in its tracks. Relieve the pain of all the generations that came before you. Stop it from spreading to the next generation.

The message board is where she first heard about root cycle magic, in a post from hedgewitchOR called “root cycle casting: take 4”. 

—

HedgewitchOR has a integrated take on root cycle magic. She says that by healing a single person (the caster), you can heal an family lineage: past, present, and future. 

The imperative of healing your full family lineage, says HedgeWitchOR, is that you can stop the pain in its tracks. Relieve the pain of all the generations that came before you. Stop it from spreading to the next generation. 

One night she calls home from a pay phone. 

One night he does. “McLay Residence,” he says. A baby is crying in the background.

“It’s me,” Tara says. For a second, Donny doesn’t say anything. “Tara,” he says, sounding almost like the little boy who helped her dress up the cat, who sulked when he had to go hunting while she got to do magic with mom. 

But the moment passes. “You have to tell me where you are,” he says. “We will find you either way, whenever that demon horde casts you out. Just make things easier on yourself.”

The baby is still crying. 

Tara hangs up the phone. The spell she used on the receiver places her in Anchorage, Alaska. 

She was hopeful, but not that hopeful. 

Starting this ritual begins with a list of the castee’s sufferings, or at least the ones from which the caster desires to heal, broken down into three sacred (and intensely personal) categories. 

Though every spell attempted is simple and may come from a variety of practices, the 3 categories do not change no matter how many times one casts a cycle. They reflect the healing of the caster, not their entire family lineage, and they are the caster’s alone to contend with. 

The first is for the healing of Want.

The second is for the healing of Betrayal.

The third is for the healing of Shame. 

Tara writes these categories down in a new notebook, keeps it next to her Biology textbook. But like all big magic, there’s a catch: only a single configuration of these simple healing spells will work at the exponential level to heal the castee’s entire family line. 

And these spells are simple but incredibly fluid, influenced by everything from the lunar calendar to the castee’s state of mind. The spells also have to be performed in order, an order that has to start at the full moon. 

So some unlucky casters try these spells, with myriad variations, over and over again, for decades.

But right now, Tara can’t test any variation, or really heal anything (let alone her entire family line) because she has no bathtub. The message board helps. 

“Could you try the ocean, or a nearby river?” asks VolcanicBruja. “I don’t think it really matters if literal physical cleansing happens, as long as submersion does. ...what about a kiddie pool? :-)

“I’m in Sunnydale, so a moonlight trip to the beach is a no go.” she writes back.

“Yikes” writes VolcanicBruja. “Be careful out there — we lost a good one in Sunnydale a while back.”

Tara knows this. It was the first thing she asked Willow, still high off the energy of lifting the Coke machine together. 

“Are YOU Techn0-Pagán?! They always posted about being in Sunnydale but then last year they just stopped posting all together, so everyone thought something hap—“ she stopped at the look on Willow’s face. 

She never brought it up again, and Willow never liked to talk about it, so Tara doesn’t actually know much about Techn0Pagan, Jenny Calendar, besides who she was to Willow.

In retrospect, it was a portent of what was to come. 

—  
Tara finally gives up and takes the bus to KMart after a morning class. 

She buys the smallest kiddie pool she can find, a blue one covered in cartoon sharks wearing sunglasses. 

She lugs it home and stores it under her bed, ready for the next new moon — ready to begin.

—

—


	3. For Healing of Want

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tara doesn’t say anything. Nothing Willow says is wrong, exactly, but it doesn’t feel right. But she has no textual basis for this, no well cited magical scholar or ancient tome saying “no, that’s not going to work, it doesn’t be done.”

For the Healing of Want

The first spell in the ritual cycle is a spell Tara has cast a hundred times. A spell to bring light. 

A creation spell, technically, which is why it is the type of spell recommended for healing of want — assuaging an absence.

Tara pulls out her plastic pool, pours in bucket after bucket of hot water. She adds salt, strips down, submerges. The spell is so simple she waits to pour away the bath until after it’s completed, places a candle on the floor in front of her, chants in Latin —bring forth the light. 

The candle’s wick sparks.

There is light.

For the healing of want.

It was simple, almost too simple of a spell for Willow. The first time they practiced it together the wick burst into flames immediately, like it could hardly wait for the spell to be complete. 

Willow grabbed the candle and held it close to her face, admiring the flame. 

“This could be so useful! We could do this to vamps, patrol with Buffy… do you think we could do this again, but, bigger? Let’s try!”

She reaches for Tara’s hand but something feels off.

“We could, but it’s a spell for light, not flame. That would… change the intention,” Tara says.

It’s not a very good reason for why it feels like a bad idea to her, but… there isn’t a good reason for the feeling, besides that she’s feeling it.

But Willow’s already flipping through the spell book, impatient. “What if you could combine this spell with some ritual, I don’t know, maybe a protection spell? Or a banishment spell, some type of monks’ incantation?”

Tara doesn’t say anything. Nothing Willow says is wrong, exactly, but it doesn’t feel right. But she has no textual basis for this, no well cited magical scholar or ancient tome saying “no, that’s not going to work, it doesn’t be done.” 

Willow keeps reading and Tara starts to clean up the salt, the petals. When Willow leaves for the night she touches her arm and smiles, and Tara forgets what’s in her gut, besides butterflies.

For the healing of want.

She runs into Faith lounging on the quad, the next day.


	4. For the Healing of Betrayal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> To cast a repair spell requires both an examination of the making of an object and an examination of the break itself. It is no different when the object is Trust.

For the healing of betrayal

Tara feels weird about the rituals when Faith first starts crashing in the other twin bed, but it turns out there’s nothing to worry about. 

Most of the rituals require moonlight, when Faith is out on patrol, and even if a ritual lasted until sunrise Faith is at the gym then, when there’s no one to see her supernatural weight training but the lacrosse boys, the only jocks who don’t notice. 

So she decides to try the next spell in the cycle: For the Healing of Betrayal. A repair spell.

To cast a repair spell requires both an examination of the making of an object and an examination of the break itself. It is no different when the object is Trust. 

Therefore, a spell to address betrayal is not a just a repair spell, but a locator spell, with healing possible only through identifying the locations of the breaking of trust. This is done through a projection of the castee’s relevant memories.

A locator spell is just as easy as a light spell. 

Tara waits until Faith goes out to patrol, fills the pool, cleanses, creates a salt circle, chants. 

The memories flow like a spring. Her mother mopping the kitchen floor. Donny waving at her from the tree in the backyard. A vampire in an eighties sweatband lunging at her throat. Buffy pointing a crossbow at her father. The spring slows to a trickle, then stops on a single memory. 

Her father holds the steering wheel with one hand and grabs her mother by the hair with the other. He slams her face into the car’s dashboard. “Shut up, just shut up, witch.” 

Donny sits next to her, eerily silent for a 4 year old. He stares out the window.

The lights of a police car appear behind them. It turns on its sirens. 

“Shit, shit.” Her father says. He and her mother exchange glances. He pulls over.

By the time the officer approaches the car, he mother has wiped off the blood from her face. 

“Is there a problem here folks? You were swerving all over the road.”

The officer smiles, her mother and father smile. 

“No sir,” Tara’s mother says, “just out for a drive.”

When the officer leaves, Tara’s mother and father laugh and laugh and laugh. Donny laughs too.   
Tara doesn’t laugh. 

Tara’s father turns the car around to go get ice cream, and her parents kiss in the parking lot, a long one like in the movies that makes Donny yell “EW!”

Tara’s mother leans around to look at the backseat while her father takes Donny to wash his hands. The skin around her left eye is raised. starting to turn yellow. “I’m sorry we scared you sweetie, but it’s all okay. He’s just worried because rent is due tomorrow. our chanting scared the landlord.”

Tara stares out the window.

“Tara.” Her mother says gently. “It’s not your dad’s fault we’re witches.” Her father didn’t say “demons” until after she died, Tara remembers. 

“Love is very complicated, honey. You’ll understand when you’re older.”

“No I won’t.” Tara told her, but her mother just sighs. 

The back seat of the car transforms into the Summers’ dining room table. 

Willow sits on one side, Tara on the other. Tara watches them, detached, floating above the table. 

“What is wrong with you?” demands the Tara sitting at the table. “How could you cast magic like that on me? On my mind. Like Glory did.” 

Willow keeps staring at the table. 

“I saved you from Glory. This isn’t the same thing at all.” she says. Her hair covers her face. 

“B-But it is.” Tara’s stutter is back. It taints every word she can think to say, sucks the air out of the room. 

Willow’s response is careful, understanding.   
“Tara, have you ever read anything about this flower? Giles’ friend wrote his whole dissertation about how it’s used in magic, it’s pretty neat. He even said in his last paper that spells won’t work with the flower unless there’s conscious or unconscious willingness from the castee. Spooky brain stuff, right?”

She looks up, smiles. Her eyes aren’t black but they might as well be. 

Tara knows what happens next. She will meet Willow’s eyes, still not black, and try to stand up, walk to the door. But nothing will happen. 

“I just… I think you’re using too much magic, Will.” she says finally, using all of her energy to stop even a hint of a stutter in those words. 

The fight is already over, now that they’re on familiar ground. It’s turf that Tara is accustomed to losing. When she finally does stand up, it’s to cross to Willow, to reassure her that no, she’s not a bad girlfriend and yes, they can figure all of this out together. They start to plan Dawn’s surprise party and they laugh. 

Tara left a few days later, with irrevocable proof of the number of times Willow has cast, will cast this spell again. But above the table, she realizes for the first time what happened here, at this table. She betrayed herself. 

With that, she drops to stand next to her past self. She extends her hand, smiles. “It’s time to go.” 

Tara stares back at her, hesitant. “I don’t think I can.” 

“You can.” She says firmly. “I promise you, you can. And it’s time.”

Willow hurtles a red ball of fire across the table. 

Tara brushes her hand to the side almost carelessly to stop it in its tracks. 

“Come on,” she says again. “Time to go.”

Her past self smiles, grabs her hand, and rises.

Tara is back in her room, which flickers with gold light. Her heart feels so much lighter.

Faith comes in a little later, as Tara’s still dragging the kiddie pool back under her bed. 

“What’s that?” Faith asked, taking off her boots before flopping into bed. 

“It’s uh, a kiddie pool. Some of the magic I’m doing requires ritual cleansing to work, but there’s no bathtubs in the dorms.” 

She waits for Faith to say something crass, since sharing that this ridiculous thing is a bathtub and that Tara is routinely getting naked in it feels like kind of a freebie. 

But all Faith says is “sick.” She looks as surprised as Tara is that she doesn’t have anything else to say. 

By the time Tara finishes dragging the pool under the bed, Faith is fast asleep. 

Tara climbs into bed too.

All that’s left in the cycle is the Healing of Shame. 

—


	5. For the Healing of Shame

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tara has always hated scrying spells. 
> 
> Ambiguous and overly theoretical.
> 
> So much math, so much logic, so much epistemology, with an intangible outcome with multiple, if not infinite, interpretations.
> 
> All for an answer that usually broke down to “it depends.”

Tara has always hated scrying spells. 

Ambiguous and overly theoretical.

So much math, so much logic, so much epistemology, with an intangible outcome with multiple, if not infinite, interpretations.

All for an answer that usually broke down to “it depends.”

Willow loved scrying spells. Long after Oz came and went, while they were still holding hands and spinning roses but only in the dark, they researched them at the Magic Box, trying to figure out what the mysterious mean girl that beat Buffy so badly could be.

“It’s just geometry and logic, and I guess a little Greek if you’re fancy, then poof: you can see the future! ,” Willow beamed. “It’s just so… neat.”

Giles looked up from the scroll he was studying. “I would have said arcane, but I suppose the theorems themselves are rather... neat.” He smiles at Willow as she scribbles furiously.

“Whatever you say, G Man.” Says Xander, his feet propped up on a book on the table. 

Xander looks at Tara, points at Giles then Willow, then mouths “crazy!” 

Tara smiles. She likes Xander, in spite of his jokes, maybe because he was the only person who seemed to notice when she was in the room. She thinks for a moment, then pulls out her mother’s three ring binder Book of Shadows. 

“I might have something,” she says, flipping through it. She shows Willow the appropriate page, who looks eager, then doubtful, then confused. When she speaks again, it’s overly light. 

“Tara,” she says, “you know this is just a locator spell, right? It just has some, uh, scrambled parts in the middle.”

Tara blushes. “I mean… what’s the difference? You have to find the information, right?”

Giles harumphs, not looking up from his scroll. He still has not yet made eye contact with Tara, 3 months in to her regularly coming to the Magic Box. “The difference is that one is serious magic for divining the truth of the world, and one is kitchen witch rubbish.”

Tara blushes again, and to her horror, so does Willow. 

Anya, absorbed in checking inventory behind the counter, rolled her eyes. “Humans are such idiots sometimes!” She said to no one in particular. “Who cares? They’re functionally the same thing.”

Giles scowled at her. “Xander, could you reminder your Demon friend that, for now, she too is an idiot human, and should not throw stones?”

“Actually you know, what about this one?” Willow broke in hurriedly, flipping pages. “I have everything I need for this at home, I can cast it while Buffy’s patrolling.” She sweeps all the books on the table into her bag, including the one Xander is resting his feet on. 

“Oh,” said Tara, still holding her mother’s Book of Shadows. “Do you want any help?” 

Willow smiles, but it’s calculatedly casual. “That’s okay — the Greek kind of requires uh, delicate pronunciation. But if it doesn’t work we can use your mom’s, I know that’s important to you. Call you tomorrow bye!” She left the Magic Box muttering Greek prepositions. 

Tara’s heart lurched. She was left behind. 

Xander’s sad smile as he offered to walk her home made it worse. 

A few days later, she met Glory. 

She met all powerful, all knowing, mind scrambling reality bending hell, consuming her with the pain of the world so that her own life shame barely registered as a blip on the radar.”

So of course. Of course the Healing of Shame is a scrying spell.

—  
Tara tries out one she copied out for practice at the Magic Box, spends hours casting runes, drawing the dimensions, chanting in Gaelic. Adjusting her prepositions then chanting in Gaelic again. Nothing happens. 

She’s terrible at this. She has no real power. 

Willow could do it, whispers her darkest self. 

She thinks of Willow facing Glory, eyes black, wielding infinite complicated magic. 

Willow could do it in an instant, if she wanted to. 

If she cared about any of these stupid kitchen witch hexes at all. 

Maybe it’s not Tara at all. Maybe it’s that her line is unfixable — Donny’s smirk, her father’s hate, her mother’s weak smile under bruises. 

Stretching back without end for centuries. What could ever heal that? What would ever change?

One morning Faith comes in as she’s working through a particularly complicated hexagram pattern in her notebook. For the 8th time. 

“You good?” Faith asks. “Did someone die?”

Tara’s embarrassment intensifies. “Math homework.”

Faith’s shoulders relax, but she keeps looking at Tara. 

“That sucks,” she says, throwing her stake on the ground and lying down in the bed. “I thought college was supposed to be all 420 + coeds. Can’t you just drop it?”

And Tara realizes, as Faith falls asleep, that she totally can. 

That night, after Faith heads out on patrol, Tara opens her mother’s book of shadows and casts the scrying spell. It is simple. She sits in a circle of salt and focuses on the object of her forecast. 

She chants, in whatever language she chooses, 5 words. Reveal what is real. 

Then she waits, chanting all the while. Reveal what is real. 

After the first hour, Tara’s voice is hoarse. In the second hour, it starts to crack. By hour three, she has to whisper. In hour four, the figures start to arrive. She keeps chanting. 

“I don’t believe in demons or witches,” says her father, standing at the window, cross in hand. “What mattered is that you and your mother did.”

Tara keeps chanting.

Willow stands by the door, pouring powerful, intricate magic into her head to rupture Glory’s hold. Her eyes turn black. 

Giles sits down on the bed behind her. “Willow is special,” he says, polishing his glasses behind her. “And special people deserve some… credence from the rest of us, wouldn’t you say?” 

“I did this because I loved you, but also to see if I could,” Willow says. 

Tara keeps chanting. 

Donny sits in her desk chair, smiling sadly. “We’re both on the paths chosen for us. It’s just a race to hell at this point.”

Tara keeps chanting. 

Glory breaks free from Willow’s hold and approaches, running her fingers to almost touch the chalk circle on the floor. She whispers to Tara. “I didn’t remember your name, not for a single second. But you will never, never be free of me.” 

The snakes are back. The snakes, the lights, the broken others, lost in hell, they’re all back, everything’s back. She never escaped to begin with. They wrap around the figures and rip them apart, pushing against the boundaries of Tara’s circle. 

Glory laughs as they devour her. 

“And you’ll never forget us — how could you?” 

Tara keeps chanting, barely a whisper.

Then Faith stumbles in— she yawns, drops a sword that never hits the ground, and dives into bed, muddy shoes and all. 

“Yeah, yeah, we’ll never forget any of this, we’re all bad people who will have nightmares until we die, we know.” She says, yawning again. “I think sometimes it’s okay to just… hang out, you know. Have fun?” 

Her mom dances past the circle, her long hair down, no longer painfully thin from chemo. “Yes!” She chimes in. “Fun! Fun is crucial. Remember,” she says, crouching down to look at Tara, “I would be so proud of you.” 

Tara keeps chanting, tries not to let the tears get in her mouth.

Her mother disappears and another figure, a version of herself, sits across from her, smiling, glowing. 

“You don’t have to pretend anymore,” she says.

“You are so powerful. You decide your own fate.”

With that, Tara’s voice gives out. She coughs, gasps for breath. The scrying spell is complete.

She tries to move but her legs are asleep. She relaxes onto the floor, lies there with her eyes closed until Faith comes in a few minutes or hours later, dropping what sounds like a large battle ax onto the floor, collapsing into the bed. 

Faith is either too tired or too disinterested to ask why Tara is sitting in a circle of salt. 

She waits until Faith’s breathing gets slow, quiet, then closes the circle, crawls into bed. The next day neither of them mention the night before.


	6. Revisions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When she finally posts on the forums, she checks out a book as she leaves. A real book, not a textbook or a grimoire.

It takes Tara until the morning to realize the cycle is complete. 

Did it work? 

Nothing has changed. 

Tara thinks about posting on the message board, but instead she goes to class, the dining hall, the library.

When she finally posts on the forums, she checks out a book as she leaves. A real book, not a textbook or a grimoire. 

She reads it sitting on the grass in the sun, with Faith. 

When she checks the boards a few days later, she’s surprised. 25 new messages, a lot even for a successful spell. She’s almost afraid to open the thread.

“Incredible!!!” writes HedgeWitchOR.

“A full cycle on your first time!!” says VolcanicBruja.

“I’m inspired. Maybe it’s time for me to dust off some of my older healing spells, try a new variation.” writes Hexcode.

All of the messages are like this — thrilled, proud, curious. 

“How long does it usually take to get the order right?” Tara writes back. When she comes back a day later — 8 replies. 

“I’ve been doing cycles off and on for 5 years” writes Codehex.   
“18 years!!!” from PentacleQueen.  
“I’ve been working on mine for 45 years (this 4th “take” is a single variation. But of course, there will always be an abundance of experiences, for better or worse, from which to draw on.” says HedgeWitchOR. 

“I hope you’re proud of casting the full cycle,” HedgeWitchOR adds. “You should be so proud. Let us know when you start a new variation.”

So Tara starts again. 

For the Healing of Want. 

—

Tara changes the light spell chant to Spanish, adds rock salt to her casting circle. 

Next time she’ll try it in Greek. Then maybe she’ll try it in Mayan. 

She sets up the kiddie pool, adds water, salt, oil, strips down.

This time when the flame erupts, it’s much bigger, glowing pink green blue red. 

But Tara can control it.

She’s about to extinguish the flame when she hears the key in the door. Faith walks in, stops.

Tara thinks about how she probably looks right now — naked, cross legged in a plastic blue pool, holding a giant multicolored ball of flame. 

Faith shifts her weight awkwardly from foot to foot, like if she not sure if she should take a step forward or a step back. “Um… I’ll come back later.” she decides. 

“No, it’s fine, sorry.” Tara places the ball of flames in a bowl next to the pool and smiles at Faith gently. Faith smiles back. Maybe the shame healing spell worked after all. “I thought you’d be out on patrol.”

“Just… came back early. It’s a new thing I’m trying. What are you doing, starting a fireworks show?” 

Tara folds her knees to her chest and tells her about root magic, the healing spells she’s working on, the message boards. 

Faith crouches down to examine the flame. “Can anybody do it? Or just witches?” she asks.

“It’s a hedge ritual, so it’s meant for anyone.”

She waits for Faith to ask her about using it on vampires, if she could try it tonight.

“And it heals your whole family? Even the shitty people?”

Tara smiles. “If it works.”

“What if you’re one of the shitty people?”

“It especially works then.”

Tara sprinkles salt on the fire, chants again to extinguish the flame. The end of the ritual. 

For the healing of want. 

She offers the bowl to Faith. “Want to try? The bath might be optional, it turns out, but it helps me focus.” 

“Maybe it will help me focus too,” Faith says, smirking. 

She takes off her boots, her pants and her jacket, kneels down into the pool while holding the bowl carefully.

“What do I do first?”

Tara smiles and they begin.


End file.
